September 18, 2009

West Bengal offers land to Wipro and Infosys

KOLKATA: September 17, 2009: The West Bengal government will formally invite information technology majors — Wipro and Infosys — to take immediate possession of 45 acres of land being offered to each of them at Rajarhat on the outskirts of the city and start constructing their facilities there.

On September 7, the government had decided not to proceed with the proposed joint sector IT township in and around Rajarhat in the wake of allegations of illegal land deals by a private partner of the project.

“We are ready to give 45 acres of land to both the IT giants, Wipro and Infosys. We will contact them and ask them to come…The units they set up will create huge job opportunities – an estimated 16,000 jobs – within the next two to three years,” Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee said here on Thursday.

The State government will contact the two companies on Friday with the offer.

The sites identified for the two IT giants is in the custody of the State’s Housing Infrastructure Development Corporation Ltd and has adequate social infrastructure that will suit the interests of the two companies, Mr Bhattacharjee said. “The price of the land being offered to them will be negotiated with the companies,” he added. Both the IT majors have been keen to set up units in the State. “In the case of Wipro, which already has a facility in the city, it is a matter of expansion of their activities. As for Infosys, they have been very eager to come.”

Admitting that it was “unfortunate” that criminal activities “of which we had no idea earlier” were being engaged in for acquiring land for a section of the proposed joint sector IT township within which the two companies had earlier been offered 90 acres of land each, the Chief Minister said his government had decided that “it would not be morally correct” for it to go ahead with the project.